It has long been known that the first few weeks of life for animals such as calves or pigs are extremely critical. Often the animals are caught by environmental and health stress, causing them to become weak and dehydrated. Traditionally this occurs during the early growth and weaning period. This condition is many times caused by the inability of the animal to assimilate nutritional elements from the intestine whereby undigested nutrients will end up in the large intestine as a substrate for undesired intestinal bacteria flora which causes diarrhea in the animal.
The total mortality from birth to weaning in normal pig production is generally as high as 20 to 25%. Many of these piglets that die are the object of intense care as they are already underweight and under stress after birth. When the young pig is weaned this is an additional stress factor especially so for the lightest pigs from each litter of pigs.
At birth these pigs have limited enzyme systems efficient only for digestion of milk. The amount of lactase, the enzyme which breaks down and digests milk sugar is high during the first few weeks of life but then decreases shortly after weaning. Meanwhile proteolytic and amylolytic enzymes needed for grain digestion are not fully developed until 4 to 7 weeks of age. Thus feed stuffs other than milk cannot be efficiently digested and absorbed until the animal is several weeks old. Further, abrupt changes in diet and environment are stressful on an animal's digestive system and under stress acids are produced which inhibit natural enzyme production, further aggravating the delicate balance of the system.
The newborn pig does not have a digestive system in which the enzymes which convert complex carbohydrates to glucose, which may be metabolized for energy, are operational. In fact the piglet is characterized as having an energy crisis until he is able to consume and digest complex carbohydrates and proteins from feeds containing grain and protein concentrates. Thus without the essential enzymes to digest and convert several complex carbohydrates into glucose which may be readily used, the pig, suffering from low blood sugar, necessarily begins secondary utilization of plasma amino acids for glucose and energy production. Consequently plasma amino acids and liver storage form of glucose, glycogen (animal starch) begin to be depleted.
Strangely enough giving pure sugar to a piglet which is experiencing these hypoglycemic problems is one of the worse treatments possible. The sugar is too rapidly absorbed (15 to 20 minutes) and causes an overproduction of insulin which plunges the piglet into more severe hypoglycemia than originally existed. The sugar provides an immediate but extremely short lived improvement followed by an insulin response which leaves the piglet worse off than before.
Amino acids and proteins can be converted into glucose very slowly providing long term relief from hypoglycemia and absorbed fatty acids can substitute to a degree for glucose as energy providers without stimulation of insulin production.
Attempts to create a feed stuff for these animals which may be digestible by combining the desired substrates with the enzyme needed for digestion of the substrate, while seemingly an ideal answer to the problem, have to date proved largely unsuccessful. One such product included supplemental enzymes from a microbial fermentation product in a barley and corn wheat based pig starter diet. This enzyme blend added to feed was run in trials on 4-week old pigs and no differences in pig performance due to enzyme supplement were seen. (C. W. Newman, et al Improvement of Pig Performance with Supplemental Enzymes and Microbial Fermentation Products, Abstract, Journal of Agricultural Science 292. Other studies done at Oklahoma State University experienced similar results.
The present invention relates to an animal feed substance and for the first time providing a microbial fermentation product comprising of amylase in combination with dried animal plasma protein. Pigs, when fed the supplement of the present invention experienced a 40% increase in gain and a 30% better feed efficiency than pigs fed a control diet with animal plasma protein in a normal pig starter ration.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a protein-enzyme feed supplement which will increase weight gain and feed efficiency for young animals.
Another object of the invention is to provide a combination of animal plasma protein with amylase which when spray dried together results in a feed supplement which will aid the growth rate of pigs and improve their feed efficiency.